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APPENDIX A. INTERVIEWS INTERVIEW WITH NICK ZOULEK
The following interview with Nick Zoulek, saxophonist and DMA student at Bowling Green State University, was conducted by Taylor Barbay Assad. It was recorded over Skype on November 21, 2018.
Taylor Assad: A lot of what I’m interested in is the process of people who collaborate, so I don’t know all of the collaborations with composers or performers that may be meaningful to you, you know, that’s what I want to get into I guess… or maybe just talk about your aesthetic as a saxophonist and as a composer as well.
Nick Zoulek: Well, for the collaborative aspect of it there’s a few ways we could go with it…
the first option, the usual, they write a piece, I play the piece, there’s people like Andrew Cole, his piece(s) were you know along those lines. There are other collaborations where the composer has approached me moreso because they’ve heard the techniques that I write with and they’re intrigued by that or they enjoy it or they just want to work together that way and those
collaborations are interesting because they’re trying to use that vocabulary in their pieces and really it becomes more of a symbiotic relationship. [The] Sensoira residency that I did at UW Milwaukee that resulted in five works for saxophone and electronics in different sorts and different mediums and that was interesting because it was a year long thing and there were workshops on the repertoire. And then the last thing that could be interesting is my own work, [with] animators and people like that. So which of those is most interesting? That’s a lot of things at once.
TA: I think they’re all interesting, for me it’s more of What did you talk about with your collaborator that made it meaningful? or maybe it changed a way you that you wrote a piece, or your talking to a composer… Did they change things before, did you meet before and discuss what you wanted? … was it during the process or maybe after, you know?
NZ: So you’re more interested in the process of it and what kind of communications were happening? Yeah, ok, so in that case it’s probably most interesting to talk about the ones where either they approached me or we like mutually agreed upon a piece and um yeah so let’s see I guess it goes different ways with who approached who that way but usually they’ll have alright s let’s pick a case study it’s too hard to generalize. So one piece that comes to mind was by
Thomas Beverly and it’s called Shake the Dust, we premiered it a SEAMUS when it was in Georgia. And, um, so for that piece, Tom Beverley, who’s a composer and also, um - what would you call it a sound designer. He does a lot of field recordings like another example of his work outside of composing he had gone around and recorded hummingbirds, uh, and then those sounds were used in a museum with this huge hummingbird exhibit so he designs that kind of stuff. As a composer when he was writing this piece, he had just completed this huge trek like….
hundreds of miles on bike through the desert. If I remember correctly it was south of California and part of the way through Texas, and the whole time he was collecting these sounds and images. So first off, one of the reasons for biking through this area, it was so isolated that there was no satellite interference and no grid interference nothing from electrical signals so he could
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pick up the sounds of the atmosphere, like, another example would be like the northern lights and stuff like that and he had a specially built like antenna or receiver that would pick that up. For images he was doing all these time lapses of, like, stars and long exposure skies, you know, yeah, different time lapse of desert scenery and things like that. And then he was collecting other random sounds from the desert. So when he approached me and all of these sounds that he and these images that he compiled and what he was interested in with my sounds was all of these different layers how they were… the fundamentals of it and then of course all of these things on top of it. So he was interested in using that sound in that if I remember correctly from the early conversations there was like something representational about that to him about this whole desert thing. You have, you know, the fundamental “what you hear when you’re in the desert,” but then the sounds extend all the way up to these things that are far beyond human perception and stuff like that. So if I remember right, that’s how that piece started. He wanted to use those sounds and then he had these images and you know the sounds of the deserts and he wanted to put all these things together. And the other concept that he was exploring was via Max and wi-fi connection.
He would be reading weather data from all of the places where these videos where these things were taken and the sounds were supposed to correspond to whatever the weather was in these particular places. Now, I don’t know if that ever actually worked. I don’t think it did, but that was the concept at least.
TA: Ok. Did he record you for the piece as well? Or no?
NZ: For this piece, no. There are other pieces where samples of mine have been used but this one was not that. It was just, it was saxophone and these sounds put together.
TA: And was it tape or was it live electronics?
NZ: For the performance that we did, it was sound files that were triggered by Max. There was some interactivity but the level of interactivity you know it wasn’t entirely interactive. There was some fixed media, there was some interactive media.
TA: So a combination, ok.
NZ: Yeah.
TA: Cool. Does he live near you or did you meet with him?
NZ: I think when we first talked about it, so he was doing his master’s while I was doing my master’s at Bowling Green. He finished his Master’s a year ahead of me. And then later on I was a TA for the University Bands here and I did a band piece for wind ensemble and electronics and that’s how the conversation started going. But he lives in Pennsylvania so he’s not too far, but throughout that whole process it was mostly conversations digitally and then a few days before the conference was when we got together.
TA: And you played it for him the first time, just like a few days before.
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NZ: Yeah. He had, it was one of those things where I would record samples and you know it was that kind of back and forth, which is so typical now.
TA: So he gave you feedback?
NZ: Yeah, that back and forth is tricky and I’ve found this whenever it comes to a piece that uses the techniques that I use … and you understand this too…when you’re.. [Skype connection lost]
What were we talking about?
TA: You’re talking back and forth and sending him recordings before you premiered the piece.
NZ: Oh yeah. And we were talking about the techniques and all of that. The biggest point of conversation was how to implement the techniques using the pitches or the you know sets of pitches (If you even want to say that I’m not sure what the theory or method was… of him deciding those pitches), but if I remember right actually he was taking like prevalent frequencies in… the field recordings, then and he wanted to map my pitches over those. That’s how he decided it. so then he’d give me those pitches be like ‘Ok, is there anything in your techniques to map over it? And I want to go from essentially from this harmony to that harmony.’ And that’s what that was. The piece has a lot of circular breathing and singing and stuff. I should mention this one, you do put a contact mike on your throat. It’s that whole kind of thing and as I’m remembering that, the throat/vocal part had the most like interactive element or the most like live process.
TA: Right ok. Yeah that would be interesting, so I don’t know if I could interview him…
NZ: Yeah, Thomas Rex Beverly.
TA: And maybe like I could look at the score or something too…
NZ: As far as I know that piece was only played at SEAMUS that one time, (laughs) as so many of these pieces are.
TA: I know it’s a lot of work for it to just be played once…
NZ: Yeah, it’s a shame.
TA: What about like after the performance, did he give you any specific feedback? Before you performed it were you like “Could you change this here?”
NZ: Yeah, there’s a lot of that, especially from the saxophonist to the composer and I’m sure you’ve found this and it’s very, I find this to be one of the most frequent things, especially with tech pieces. There’s so much thought that goes into the tech, right? But then the distribution is an issue sometimes along with the score, and how readable it is, and how much is reliant on the performer knowing what to do. Man, there’s this video piece right now that I’m about to do again by composer Mark Oliverio. And it’s a nice piece. It has interactive video and a lot of
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sampling. It’s called Black (Midi) Matter and I did it at Navy Band [Saxophone Symposium] this year and I’ll do it at Oakland University in just a couple of weeks but, um, this is another one he approached me because he was really into the singing and playing thing, and to him that sounded like a low frequency oscillator where you input one pitch into the other and you get the resulting sounds. So that’s what he was really enamored with. So he gave me the sketch and for Navy Band the performance went just find but there were a lot of details that if it hadn’t been like my techniques and if we hadn’t talked like the whole time, then you know who knows how that would have turned out.
TA: Or if it’s, say, the next person who received the score, maybe he doesn’t have enough instruction for them but you know because of being in the process with the composer.
NZ: Right. Which is an issue, not just for reproducibility of the work and not just for realizing the composer’s vision but also just for longevity and also advancing the instrument, there are all these things we can do, but of course it’s limited by notation and practicality and all of that so…
TA: Right. Have saxophonists commissioned pieces from you or do you mostly just write stuff for yourself?
NZ: From a composer’s perspective, there have been a couple of people who have approached me for commissions, but it’s, you know that’s why for lack of a better term I’m not a “capital c”
composer but a “lower c” composer because I’m mostly writing output that I’m interested in playing and of course others have played the pieces I’ve already written but even with the pieces that I write, really for me the end product is when video is online and streaming or when the album is out and I will shift a piece until then. So I haven’t really pursued commissions as much, kind of purposefully, it’s just not where my output is right now. But I feel like there’s more to talk about with the collaborative aspect especially if visual media or multimedia is at play. What works are you looking at right now for the paper?
TA: All the early pieces like Terry Riley and Steve Reich…
NZ: So is it primarily then is it a question of canonizing certain works….
TA: Not really, … this is more about the process the collaborative process.
NZ: …When that technology is from a large corporation and dealing with the increasingly quick obsolescence of technology, and sometimes even planned obsolescence, right? Because that piece was written originally with the Yamaha WX7 wind controller in mind and then you know you had to port all of this technology around and in Heisler’s document he talks about how Difficult that was and all these revisions that they did but you know then when you get to it now, I mean, a WX7 like yeah you can find them, but just getting that running, like, you got to work to make that thing happen. So then there’s the question what happens to that piece? You know, Jeff adapted that one for MAX MSP, but even so, like, what data is lost in the adaptation of it? I always think that you mentioned the Steve Reich and the Terry Riley pieces and all of that. I always think it’s funny when I hear especially like young saxophonists. …Fancher’s recording, you know there are so many questions of identity there, … it’s Susan’s sound… it really would
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be quite different than you playing all those parts on your own. Same with Reed Phase… and technically that’s still more analog than digital…so really the medium has changed and it’s important to think about the medium. Where else from there …?
NZ: In terms of recent ones, that Mark Oleviro… the five works for saxophone and media…
there was this sensoria residency… of those I’ve only played two of them multiple times afterword the other ones like there are some decent pieces like these Andrew Cole ones this frozen atmospheres piece… Andrew I don’t think really composes anymore but that leads to a really interesting point… but then if other saxophonists aren’t ready to perform it then it’s going to fail and I feel like that’s the story of 2000-2010. Yeah, the guy who was really pushing, especially with the saxophone and electronics thing was Michael Straus… not to mention like one of our key advertising venues is the saxophone conference or any saxophone conference and we still struggle to get solid tech at those which I think everyone’s aware of but how can you give a solid performance?
TA: Have you had any collaborations that were less than ideal?
NZ: You know to be honest, I’ve enjoyed all of the collaborations I’ve had but I really don’t try to force collaborations. I think this is just a personal way of approaching it. …Solid
collaborations are built on solid personal bonds.
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